Occupy Wall Street activists have good reason to be pissed off at Michael Pollok, the New York attorney trying to organize a national Occupy convention in Philadelphia this coming July 4th against the wishes of Occupy Philly and Occupy Wall Street. A quick look into Michael Pollok’s past, combined with his divisive push for a convention that most in the movement think is a disastrous idea, all point to yet another cynical political opportunist glomming onto the Occupy movement. Even worse, it looks like Pollok’s plan is to replicate the GOP’s Tea Party strategy: That is, to use public support for OWS in order to get a bunch of “independent” candidates elected into Congress. Pollok himself tried unsuccessfully running for Congress not long ago.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Occupy Wall Street isn’t endorsing the Occupy conference being planned in Philadelphia because the idea wasn’t approved by its general assembly.

An attorney who advised some Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last year said this week that his 99% Declaration Working Group is planning a national Occupy conference in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July. The attorney, Michael Pollok, said delegates will be elected from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories. Participants will draft and ratify a “petition for a redress of grievances” and present them to President Barack Obama and Congress, he said.

But Han Shan, a member of the Occupy Wall Street public relations working group, said Thursday that the conference was mainly Pollok’s idea and that, while Occupy Wall Street may support some of its ideas, the group isn’t endorsing the conference itself.

The AP gets it right, but leaves leaves out one crucial part of Pollok’s Big Plan: The Occupy conference in Philadelphia is not just about bringing a bunch of people together to petition politicians “for a redress of grievances”… it’s really the kickoff event of an ambitious multi-year plan to create a political organization designed to train, promote and run a bunch of so-called “Occupy” candidates in the 2014 mid-term elections, and beyond.

If that sounds familiar to you lefties, that’s because it’s been tried before. In fact, it sounds almost exactly like Van Jones’ plan to use Rebuild the Dream, an organization he helped create in 2011 to emulate the workings of Koch astroturf outfits that funded the Tea Party movement, to train up and run a couple of thousand so-called Occupy candidates on behalf of the Democratic Party. “We’re gonna be recruiting 2,000 candidates to run for office now under this 99 percent banner,” Van Jones proudly told CNN back in November. “You’re gonna see an evolution now as you go from a protest…keep the protest, but now expand into politics.”

The ratified petition will be presented to all 535 members of Congress, the 9 members of the Supreme Court, the President of the United States and each of the political candidates seeking federal public office in the November 2012 general election. Candidates will be asked to respond to the petition, and their responses will be shared with the voting public.

The National General Assembly gives the 113th Congress, President and the Supreme Court reasonable time to act upon and redress the grievances listed in the petition. If the grievances are not redressed to the satisfaction of the NGA, delegates reconvene to organize a new grassroots campaign for political candidates who publicly PLEDGE to redress the grievances. These candidates will seek election for all open Congressional seats in the mid-term election of 2014 and in the elections of 2016 and 2018.

So to recap: Pollok’s plan involves whipping together a list of political demands at a “convention” not supported by either the original Occupy or the local Philly Occupy, then handing those demands over to our pro-1% politicians. No need to challenge them in the upcoming elections, so forget about that. But if these politicians don’t start acting on the Occupy Pollok demands in, say, a year or two, Pollok wants to train up and put money into running his own “Occupy” candidates, who would publicly promise to support the grievances of the 99%.

There are so many problems with this, but the first big problem is the most obvious problem to anyone involved in Occupy: The movement was only beginning the early work of educating itself on political economy, on organizing, and working out an ideology or ideologies. The idea that it’s all ready to play political games in a thoroughly rotten system is bullshit.

Which raises the question: Who the hell is Michael Pollok? And why should anyone trust him?

Well, turns out that he’s a DUI attorney who recently defended a corrupt New York official convicted of grand larceny (Pollok’s client also threatened to “string up” witnesses who were testifying against him). Pollok describes his criminal law practice as specializing defending DUI offenders, as well as white collar criminals.

But more relevant, Mr. Pollok has proven political ambitions, with his eye on a future career in Washington D.C. Most recently, he tried running for Kirsten Gillibrand’s New York’s 20th congressional district. So who knows, maybe we’ll see Michael Pollok running as an “Independent Occupy candidate” in 2016. What better way to get elected then to hitch yourself to the Occupy bandwagon, right?

Pollok’s first Occupy campaign ad…

To help move the process along, Pollok set up a non-profit company called “The 99% Working Group, Ltd.” and has been actively seeking donations for at least the past three months–since almost the very beginning of the Occupy movement:

We are now within $1,000 of our first fund raising target to put a downpayment on the venue. We could really use help from #OWS to pay for the venue and costs of the election. All of the funds we have raised so far are being held in escrow by our attorneys and nothing will be spent without full disclosure. The only money that has been spent to date came from two anonymous donors who directly paid for the production of the commercial including the licensing of the music and air time.

Notice how the initial funds for his orgs came from two anonymous donors—full disclosure indeed. Perhaps Michael Pollok should enlist the fundraising services of John Paul Thornton of the Occupy SuperPAC. They’d make a great political pair.

36 Comments

so you’re going after this guy for the grave sin of trying to do something (however misguided it may be) but won’t even mention the federal agent running OLA telling people to show their IDs on demand at protests (but won’t show hers).

nice.

i wished i had half as much balls than yasha.

AEC: So they card at the door? How old do you have to be to get in to OLA?

2.
Commandante Esteban | February 28th, 2012 at 1:36 pm

This is a perfect example of what Chomsky calls “vanguardism” – some self appointed ambitious guy who may or may not mean well deciding he’s the one who’s going to ride us to glory- specifically defined as a seat in congress to be followed by a nice lobbying position for Raytheon or whatever.

3.
Strelnikov | February 28th, 2012 at 2:52 pm

Reminds me of when Ed “Big Daddy” Roth tried to sell Hell’s Angels T-shirts in the 1960s and Sonny Barger said that his group would rip them off the back of anybody they saw wearing one.

OWS is not a left-wing copy of the Tea Party; it’s not a front for the Democrats, it’s not run top down, and it wasn’t created by an astroturfing outfit. Pollock can have his own fake group, but it’s not Occupy Wall Street.

4.
Dtd | February 28th, 2012 at 3:01 pm

“have good reason to **be** pissed off at”

5.
Dtd | February 28th, 2012 at 4:17 pm

“Notice how back the funds contributed to his organization came from two anonymous donors”

Maybe I am drunk; does that make sense grammatically?

Sorry, I don’t wanna be the grammar nazi, but before I blow this up on occupy oakland’s forum I wanna wait for a cleanup so nobody on the right can exploit that shit.

Hell, for all I know its fine and I just have double vision.

Also, you can see my skinny whiteass in that Oakland doc you guys linked to. I’m not gonna say which one I am though. Especially on a frequently koch trolled site like this.

6.
proletariat | February 28th, 2012 at 5:02 pm

no, censor, but i really hope you can see how it’s a bad idea to be showing your ID to total strangers at protests.

she claims it should be done to discourage undercovers, which is stupid, because undercover agents can easily obtain (if they don’t already have) fake IDs. being as, you know, they sort of work for the people who issue you an ID.

what i see here is a plot to get a nice list of potential dissidents, where they live, what they look like and then if shit jumps off, they know exactly what doors to knock down.

she’s also shady as fuck in other ways, but hey. let’s go after this guy when we have a fucking undercover fed running OLA.

i would think yasha, who got arrested as part of OLA and should be reasonably familiar with the movement would be more interested in that than one new yorker with political aspirations.

By the way, you’ve already announced your intentions. No matter WHERE the “evidence” came from now, you’ve made it clear, and you can be traced by the three letter agencies.

13.
state | February 28th, 2012 at 7:37 pm

you are all stupid and no one cares

14.
what | February 28th, 2012 at 7:38 pm

@9, ya goofball

idgi… just post from someone’s burner or buy one yourself for 50 cents. Use your favorite proxy service. Maybe have a friend that knows how to computer post stuff for you. How are you not posting anonymously in this day and age?

I would that assume anyone pretending to be *unable* to safely post anonymously in North America is either

a) lying
b) too dim-witted to be taken seriously*

*(because you don’t even have the good sense to have a couple of nerd friends– that’s just plain dumb)

If you’re going to out a “federal agent” just DO IT. What the hell is the point of posting a coy little striptease about the topic and then backing off?

15.
super390 | February 28th, 2012 at 7:51 pm

I’ve got a better idea. Let’s start colonizing the collapsed neighborhoods of the USA. We know Detroit is literally up for grabs. Look for areas where more than 1/2 the buildings are empty or truly past their owners even showing up again, form teams to fix them up or tear them down, plant crops in all the empty lots, sell produce from trucks, buy old vans and turn them into mobile restaurants. Start charter schools and organize neighborhood patrols. Build workshops to fix up old ebay junk. You could probably control a congressional district and elect one of your own with only 50,000 people.

This is stuff humans have done fairly recently. Probably a good idea to start now before producing actual useful goods becomes a lost art.

16.
proletariat | February 28th, 2012 at 8:23 pm

you probably know who i’m talking about. look up her own articles on OLA’s website. there’s one about OLA-ASM and “infiltrators” where she specifically tells people to show their IDs whenever asked and never keep anything secret, including who they are, where they live and what they’re planning.

if you don’t have alarm bells going off by that time, i have no fucking idea what to say to you.

and do you think i’m stupid enough to even offer to drop dox on a FBI agent if they could trace it back to me?

This will pass. Occupy’s principles draw on 150+ years of Anarchist experience. The otro mundo is internally consistent and has no overlap with the old one; once you make the jump, and Occupy participants have, you’re in.

19.
proletariat | February 28th, 2012 at 11:21 pm

@17

so people aren’t even sure she’s a real person and she gives very stupid, dangerous advice, yet OLA is still letting her write for their website (wherein she rants and raves about how everyone but her is an agent provocateur) and didn’t rebuke her when she’s claimed leadership positions (like the head of OLA’s legal team.

in fact, she’s managed to dig herself so far in that credible journalists go to her for information.

so yes, i’d say she’s influential. if not in reality, in perception, and you better fucking believe that matters.

@15, that’s actually more or less my prediction for the future. Those dreaming of revolution are, well, dreaming. But as a permanent underclass grows, direct action will inevidably lead to an off the grid shadow society. Check out the slum village movement in south africa. The difference in the u.s. is that we have much nicer infrastructure to take over

21.
hazey | February 29th, 2012 at 4:12 am

1) OLA-ASM (OLA AntiSocial Media) is the greatest thing since sliced bread, most of the time.

2) Sue Basko, During the first few weeks of the Occupy LA facebook group – I called that shit out as a right wing troll – it accused me of being a 12 year old revolutionary who was planning OLA in order to get peoples head s crushed as unwitting martyrs for my political cause. I wish I was that bad-ass at 12. Anyway enough to say Sue Basko is lullzy, always crying about the permits and how everyone was going to go to prison unless they got permits and ‘she’ is a lawyer and protest veteran and knows this to be a fact.
Y’all didn’t run her off after a blocked her?

Sooo, she’s been demoted from being a leader and secret fed who demands paperwork, to a phantom blogger that lazy journalists cite, and that has a “perceived” influence in the eyes of people who don’t know any better (you). Just so we’re clear on that—your gradually diminishing claims, and what not.

They’ve had a lot of people claim “leadership” positions. Pollok is one. There’s also that jackass with the SuperPAC, another couple attorneys, the Progressive Caucus, an overbearing labor organizer, Ron Paul lickspittles, conspiracy loons, Van Jones, The Zeitgeist Movement, career stoners, etc. There’ve been more organizations, individuals, parties, campaigners, entrepreneurs, technocrats, social theorists, communists, and assorted hangers on than I can even recall. That will continue for as long as it’s viable.

What about it?

Don’t retreat into it being bad press, because that’s not what you claimed. You said she was a gatekeeper for OLA, a prominent leader, a spook, and that you feared for your life for even mentioning it.

If she’s a provocateur, she’s using reverse psychology, because she recommends getting permits for farting, and following the letter of the law. She’s been such a milquetoast pain in the ass for some people (via blog—barely anyone believes in her existence) that someone plainly told her she needed to get laid.

Have you EVER been to anything OLA has participated in? Are you following this whole thing via fucking blogs? That’s the only explanation I can think of, at this late hour, for your slapstick and backpedaling.

23.
Man Among the Ruins | February 29th, 2012 at 7:31 am

Lovely, another black power monger out to manipulate naive white leftists. It seems that another generation has to feel the mailed fist of tribal power smashed against their face before they wake up. Guess what, young white Occupier: this New York lawyer is not interested in more power for you; to him you are just a useful idiot for his own power agenda.

If you want real power, young white Occupier, you must seek transgressive power, which means rejecting Leftist agendas which begin with the deck stacked against you. The most powerful radicalism in America is going to be tribally based, radically anti-multicultural/corporate/state fascism, and it’s going to be led by disenfranchised whites.

The modern Left has made you a villain, white man, and offers you only a dark future of decline. Your future is only bright if you make it bright, by taking back the power your parents gave away, rediscovering your racial pride and remaking your civilization.
So wake up, young white man, whose forefathers walked on the moon and whose cities have fallen to ruin. America’s days are numbered, but the Western Imperium is rising, and it welcomes all young Occupiers who want to fight for *real* hope and change.

THE A.E.C. RESPONDS:

Gonna let this confused white-power waterhead’s comment through as the Almighty assumes ye know how to read it by now. The A.E.C. would like to remind pop-Darwinists and Deliverance biologists like this poor fool that pure breds are degenerates and suffer genetic defects; mutts and mixed breeds are the smartest and healthiest. But that can only be explained to other fellow mutts, so, uh, sorry about the recessive gene Man Among Deliverances, and good luck with that white power thing.

Thank you for your inquiry. I regret to inform you that the black person pictured is called “Van Jones.”

Which is spelled differently from “Michael Pollok”—a name belonging to an attorney who is also a different color from the aforementioned black person, who he, as mentioned a moment ago, isn’t.

I believe the “power monger out to manipulate naive white leftists” to whom you refer actually belongs to your brotherhood of beige.

This fact is easily discovered by searching either name in the popular “Google” search engine—though that’s rather moot, since it’s also true that your ideological framework wouldn’t be compatible with even a grade schooler’s level of intellectual curiosity, or a Basset Hound’s ability to distinguish between faces.

However, I do recognize that the life of a person so bereft of individual talent or distinction that he must strain to associate himself with the accomplishments of people sharing a superficial set of genetic features, rather than his actual self, is only made tolerable by a vicarious bettering of other races through an exhausting ritual of confirmation bias.

If you feel that knowing the opportunist named in this article is a honkey has damaged your self perception in some way, I would advise a simple exercise. Borrow a metronome, and beat your head against the pavement to confirm your lack of the Devil Rhythm.

Best,
Dr. Mongrel, Senior Fellow at The Department of Not Being a Racist, Backwater Dipshit

25.
Man Among the Ruins | February 29th, 2012 at 12:28 pm

Sorry Mike and AEC, but as a practical matter your arguments are intellectually bankrupt, because you commit the common liberal error of demanding that people of my demographic be so individualistic that we deny the existence of a larger community who share our identity. This is particularly foolish in America, where every other tribal group has formed a collective for the purpose of acquiring power. What you are asking is that whites become so atomized that they can no longer act in their collective interest or celebrate their culture, while accepting every other minority group’s right to do so.

Sorry, but this dog doesn’t hunt any more, now that white people are waking up to the utter bankruptcy of leftist guilt-mongering ideology. If leftists refuse to recognize our right to live as we want — as people have always lived — without being imposed upon by their mad multiculturalist schemes, we will fight them and take back our right by force of arms!

THE A.E.C. IS STILL IN A HIGHLY CHARITABLE MOOD. TO WIT, QUOTING A FAR MORE SERIOUS FASCIST THAN YOU’LL EVER HOPE TO BE, FROM CELINE:

“What you call a race is nothing but a collection of riff-raff like me, bleary-eyed, flea-bitten, chilled to the bone. They came from the four corners of the earth, driven by hunger, plague, tumors and the cold, and stopped here. They couldn’t go any further because of the ocean. That’s France, that’s the French people.”

“Bardamu,” he says very gravely and a bit sadly. “Our forefathers were as good as we are, don’t speak ill of them!…”

“You’re right, Arthur, there you’re right! Hateful and spineless, raped and robbed, mangled and witless, they were as good as we are, you can say that again! We never change. Neither our socks nor our masters nor our opinions, or we’re so slow about it that it’s no use. We were born loyal, and that’s what killed us!”

Turning a street action movement into a poltical party is a time-tested strategy of the Brown Nose Collective (BNC). They did the same with the militant labor movement of the 1870′s and many times after that. The French Syndicalists of the early Twentieth Century recognized that the power of labor is in strikes, civil disobedience, and boycotts. They puposely avoided politics and basically said, “Our method is to put the pressure on the system. Let the politicians figure out how to please the working class. Our job is to make them want to.”

Yes, we’ve already established that you have no individual qualities worth preserving. However, I recommend (in addition to you savagely beating your own head against the nearest sidewalk when you’re through reading this), that you identify as a “human supremacist.”

Not in some New Age, brotherhood of man kind of way, but just to have access to so many more people that have done remarkable things because they aren’t you.

29.
proletariat | March 1st, 2012 at 1:41 am

@22

No. I live a long ways away from LA.

However, if one was to read OLA’s website and keep track of their movement, they see the name “Sue Basko” coming up time and time again. Not once has OLA rebuked her. Not once have they come out and said she’s not a part of them. In fact, she still writes for their website and pretends to be a leader of the “movement”

One of COINTELPRO’s objectives is to control the narrative, and that’s exactly what they have done here, thanks to idiot liberals.

You bourgeois liberals have let someone you all suspect is a cop dig her way into the “movement” without any challenge.

Therefore, don’t tell me shit about feds. We were facing FBI death squads when you were still lynching blacks for eating in the wrong restaurants.

You could do something with the facts that you and I know, but I suspect you won’t. Changing things would be hard, and it might result in you not having the next gen Ipad extra coltan edition!

Read this comment section, sisters and brothers, if you want to see how the left is well and truly dead in America.

30.
proletariat | March 1st, 2012 at 1:45 am

To be more concise about what I (and most of the rest of the ragged remains of the American “left”), think about the Occupy “movement”:

I see you’ve graduated from hysterical warnings from afar about infiltration, to bizarre rebukes for not having been born in time to stop segregation, to fish stories about intelligence agencies (“the file was thiiiiis biiiiig”), and finally condescending ADVICE. That’s what I love about ‘Murica. That can-do, never-quite-think-things-through spirit, to paraphrase Kent Brockman (IIRC).

And now you’re letting someone else’s article, written about a different thing decades ago, proxy for your bitching about something you STILL know nothing about.

Facing an “FBI death squad” is even more perilous than “dropping d0x” on a ruthless secret agent like Basko! I know this, because I have no familiarity with the subject, but a random guy claiming to have info in it mentioned it once. I think he was the FBI’s leader. Oh wait, that was you. Do you know they have EVEN FLOPPIER hats than the one Basko is wearing in the one photograph she has on her blog, MySpace, etc.?

You’re the first person I’ve run into, not in OLA, that had ANY notion of there being a “narrative” to be found in the slap fight between their media teams. Because nobody cares.

Most people in LA don’t even know where anyone pooped during the occupation (FYI, there were more than a half dozen portable toilets, and the “nice” bathroom at the mall where no one but city employees—and OLA people—shop). Maybe if OLA media put a few more dozen hours into pelting each other with nonsense, and issuing statements with no means to distribute them, they could win over a convert that never shows up or contributes (you).

Gold, Jerry! SB: “… I am not an “angry” person, I am just a very intelligent, and very very street smart person. (Keep in mind, most of my music work is with rappers, and there are reasons they trust me..)”

My name is Michael Pollok, founder of the shady group mentioned in this article. I am sad to say that my brilliant project to use OWS to launch my political career has run aground and I have been reduced to trolling websites and forums. Like right now, I’m gonna say “What a bunch of crap.” And then I’m gonna throw a mean insult at this fine publication, saying “No wonder you have been exiled. No one can believe a word you write. Do you source anything or just get your copy from Soros?” Oooo, that one hurt, didn’t it? Tell me the truth? Comon, it had to hurt. I called you a Soros shill!

After I’ve thouroughly trashed you and reduced to a mumbling mess with my brilliant flaming, I’m going to suggest you “Go to our webpage and judge for yourself rather than being brainwashed by Adbusters and the corporate funded DNC who fear a new progressive movement that can remove both corrupt parties. There is no difference between the Dems and Reps anymore. They are all owned by corporations.” Bet you didn’t know that, Yasha Levine. Well now you do. That’s what I’m here for. Maybe you want to make a donation to my group? We’re really running low on funds here. And I had HBO ready to film my rise to power and glory. Please, I really need this.

36.
Marion Lester | May 26th, 2012 at 4:21 pm

COMBAT LIBERALISM
Liberalism is a manifestation of opportunism and conflicts fundamentally with Marxism. It is negative and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst. Such being its nature, there should be no place for it in the ranks of the revolution.
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

GO GO Liberals fight the Communist and the Conservatives

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